simplerich

Let that long tail wag! It started with TechCrunch then went to TalkingStory and then here. I’m pretty far out there so if you haven’t seen this topic covered already I’d be surprised. I’d also recommend you go read the source material that inspired this one.

I’ll break it down into Use Daily, Use Weekly, and Mean to Use But Forget. I almost included a “Can’t imagine a use for” or “Never use” but that just seemed mean. I’m going to include things I use for work and personally.

Daily:

1. Android Phone – I switched from Blackberry to Android the day it came out for Verizon and was in love immediately. Personally and professionally it’s changed my work flow completely. The syncing with the Googleverse made using it immediately easy and seamless on and offline. I couldn’t imagine using a different phone. Just like TechCrunch‘ commented on it’s seamless integration with Google Voice was a huge plus. The transcription of voicemails to text messages and e-mails, even when not perfect, and it rarely is, is a huge time saver. Aiming it at whatever phone number I want to aim it at is a huge plus as well.
2. Gmail – I really don’t understand how anybody would use anything other than Gmail for their mail. I use it to grab my work e-mail from the work servers and still act as if it were coming from our work domain when I send mail. My bosses don’t know I’m not using their godaddy web-interface, they just know that I can find any e-mail they’ve ever sent me in seconds. They believe I’m very organized. I just know how incredibly useful the search function is on Gmail. The huge mailbox size is also a huge help. While my work mailbox could fill up (It doesn’t due to Gmail gobbling the e-mail out of it) my Gmail box doesn’t. Co-workers get full e-mail boxes. I don’t.
3. Kindle – Technically a kindle2, but that’s splitting hairs. The e-book reader from amazon has changed the way I read in the less than a year that I’ve had it. For one thing I read a lot more often now and a bigger variety of books. Now that they’ve added PDF support to it I have an even larger selection of reading material to choose from. I can carry enough books for months of reading in my backpack on a work trip. I can get more books while I’m in my hotel room without having to get out of bed. I can bookmark, annotate, search, highlight, and mark-up a book from within the kindle and nobody accuses me of tearing up a book.
4. iPod nano (and itunes)– I know I finally sold out completely and don’t just refer to it as an mp3 player. The features of the iPod and itunes together, and it’s the magic of the two of them together that I love mind you. One of the things I like personally about the iPod is that it works with the Nike+ site and the iPod doo-dad that helps me with my running. No other mp3 player does that for me. Audiobooks, audible.com, and podcasts are what I primarily use the iPod for. I have music on it, but I’m mostly a spoken word person and itunes is excellent at grabbing my podcasts and managing them for me on the iPod.
5. Dropbox – This one is surprising to me when everybody doesn’t use it. It’s a small program that sits in my taskbar and syncs some folders I aim it at with a site on the web. I can then choose to make those folders on the site public, private, or share them with only certain people. The default is to make them private. I recently went from a Macbook Pro to a PC Laptop and it was the easiest transition I’ve ever made. I had all my work stuff in a folder in Dropbox already (called “Workrap” respectfully enough lol.) Now, imagine if you have multiple computers… you install Dropbox on all of them, log onto them with the same account and suddenly your “Workrap” folder is on all your computers and if you update a file at work it’s automatically updated on your home computer and on your laptop as soon as they get on the internet. If you update it while you’re offline, when you get online it’ll sync up just fine. Seriously changed my workflow. Using another person’s computer? Log onto dropbox online without installing anything and get the file you want to show them and you’re set.
6. Evernote – My brain. I’m not exaggerating. I store everything on Evernote. It’s similar to Dropbox in that it’s “in the cloud” and I can keep things synced across multiple computers and my phone. I store all my information in there. Online, offline, on my phone. If I need to find Mom’s Gumbo recipe and I’m in the grocery store I fire up Evernote on my phone and grab it. If I’m on my laptop and someone calls I automatically open Evernote as my capture device.
7. OpenOffice.org – I haven’t paid for Microsoft Office since the early 90s when I bought Works. I’ve used the free open source alternative for Word, Calc, and Presentations. I love OpenOffice, couldn’t be without it.
8. Laptop – I use it every day but I don’t love it. I loved my Macbook Pro but it wasn’t working out for me at work. I found myself running in parallels all the time for stuff so I’m back to Windows. Now, I prefer Windows 7 to Vista, but it’s hard to come back to a PC after being a Mac user.

Weekly:

1. Google Docs – I should use this one more than I do. I use it weekly to save work documents that I get e-mailed to me by my boss. I open them with Google Docs to make sure there’s a copy out there in the cloud as well. Since I’ve started using Dropbox I’ve used Google Docs less and less. I use it primarily when I’m on the net tracking something a lot and don’t want to wait for OpenOffice to open up. I track my fitness stuff on Google Docs but other than that and the one work document that’s about all I use it for.
2. WordPress & Blogger – I’d like to say I use these two blogging platforms more often than weekly, but I’ve been a little slow lately. I’m getting better, but I love my blogging and both platforms offer something that makes me keep them both.
3. Digital Camera – I love my Canon Powershot. It’s not the biggest, fastest, most megapixels thing out there but it fits in my pocket and allows me to get the shots some of my friends with fancier cameras can’t or don’t get because their camera takes too long to prep for the shot. I enjoy taking pictures, and while I took fewer this year than previous years it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it as much as it was because I wasn’t as happy. Work was/is affecting my quality of life and one of the measures of how happy I am is how many pictures I take. The quiet months are unhappy months. I know, more than you wanted to know, but it’s an interesting observation nonetheless.

Mean to Use But Forget:

1. Pandora – I love this music streaming service but I always forget it. Then I’ll remember it for a few days and then it falls off the radar again for another couple months.
2. Stanza – I’ve gotten so hopped up on using the kindle that I really like reading e-books now but sometimes I have my laptop and not my kindle and I sort of stare at the wall wondering what to do next. It’s only later that I remember I have Stanza on my laptop which will allow me to read many e-book formats. (It also converts between formats so I can get some things on the kindle that I couldn’t before.)
3. Windows Widgets – I keep meaning to turn them back on but I forget. Then I remember and turn them on for a while and then turn them back off. I want to like them but can’t find it in me to stick with them. I’ll try them every month or so.

So, what technology do you use to make your job/life easier.

This is how it all started over at smartypig. Well, that’s not how it started, that’s how it ended. The smartypig savings goal was reached and I cashed it out into amazon gift cards. I didn’t have to wait for the cards, they e-mailed them to me.

Rich,

Congratulations on closing your “Kindle” goal to
Amazon.com!  Your gift card codes are as follows:

Yep, that’s right. A personalized letter congratulating me on my success at savings along with the benefits of my savings. I immediately felt good about the whole savings thing. I enjoy saving money. But this money wasn’t saved to sit around in a bank for them to screw it up. I t was saved for an amazon kindle 2.

Next I got this e-mail from amazon.com

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:
1  Kindle: Amazon’s 6″ Wirele…

After ordering it I sat at home and waited to regret spending that much money on what is essentially a luxury item. I don’t do that a lot really. I didn’t though. Instead I had visions of my reading all the classics. Me sitting in a recliner sipping hot tea listening to light music. Me tearing through all those books I need to read that I’ve got added to my to-read list over on goodreads. I was pretty sure that the kindle 2 was going to solve all my problems.

No pressure at all on this chunk of plastic and circuitry that is currently whizzing it’s way towards me in a brown truck. All it needs to do is give me more time in the day so I can get some reading done just like my Google profile says I need! It will help me manage my time better, Google Calendar is helping with that when I sync it with my blackberry too. But this kindle… coming Monday I think? THAT will be the panacea that cures everything for me.

So… the summer of gadgetry is off to a good start. I’ve got another smartypig savings goal coming up in the beginning of September when I go buy myself a new laptop, a PC. I’ll let you know what I decide on. I’m sort of doing the PC challenge that Microsoft ads have been talking about on TV lately.

At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.”

via At BookExpo This Year, the Talk Was of eBooks – NYTimes.com. (Emphasis mine)

OK, listen folks… if you’re an author and you want readers one thing you shouldn’t do is trash-talk your readers. The thing is… I’ve never heard of this person and the odds of me having ever read his books were vanishingly small before this incident… now they’re zero.

If you’re in sales, and authors are in sales if they try and make their living selling their books, saying you want to hit a potential customer is stupid. I suspect the elitist accusation that was made is a case of pot & kettle… or outright grandstanding for an attention starved individual looking for some sensationalist press.

Face by the same author is available on kindle, which, if he were to pay attention would be a digital form. It is however not a novel. It’s a book of poetry, as is The Business of Fancydancing, which is also available as a digital download via kindle’s whispernet. So I think there’s some very fine hair-splitting there. Maybe no novels of his on kindle, but the poetry, what that’s OK? One wonders at the consistency of that sort of logic.**

** I typically only link to amazon books I would recommend. I don’t recommend these books at all. I don’t recommend anything by this author who is obviously an attention starved arteest, but I did want to link to the digital editions of his works. If somebody wants to shop from there I’d happily take a buck or two from them, but I’d rather have donations here so I can get me some kindle love!

Earlier today I twittered that I was a fan of SmartyPig. I got two e-mails asking me a) Is it for real with those interest rates and 2) how do I use it? Well a partial answer for how I use it is to show some examples of what I use it for:

SmartyPig is an online bank I use it for saving towards specific goals both necessary and luxury. I think of SmartyPig as a reverse credit card. Instead of putting something on the card and then paying for it. I pay for it in small, manageable payments, and then, when I have enough, I move the money back into my bank-account and go buy the thing I was saving for. Rather than paying the credit card company interest on the thing, I get paid interest while I save for the item. This helps stop me from making impulse purchases, and gives me time to anticipate the purchase and shop around for best place to buy it.

When I first heard of SmartyPig and the really high interest rates (3.05% APY as of 5/27/09) they were offering compared to my other banks I was very skeptical. If it’s too good to be true it probably is was my assumption. I set up a trial account for my car stereo. 286 dollars. Yes. I can afford that as a one time purchase, this was a test of SmartyPig though. How easy was it to set up an account and would they really give me my money back at the end? Well, it was that easy, and yes they did.

SmartyPig is owned by Westbank and my deposits are FDIC insured. I started the account with twenty-five dollars and couldn’t do anything with it until the twenty-five dollars posted from my Wells Fargo account to SmartyPig. Once it was in though (about 3 days), I could adjust the amount of my monthly deposit as well as the total goal I was saving for and the time by which I wanted the goal met. I could raise the goal really high or down to $250 (the minimum goal you an set). I could even close it out and get my money back out and transferred back to my Wells Fargo account if I wanted. They didn’t hold my money or make me leave it in for any length of time. It was still my money, and still accessible by me. I set it at the goal at the cost of the car stereo, set the time for a couple months down the road and watched the money automatically transfer from one bank account into the other. I was notified at every step of the way by e-mail that a transaction was about to take place, and that one HAD taken place. It was very transparent and painless.

Once the goal had been reached it stopped withdrawing money and was willing to just sit there, continuing to acrue interest until I took it out. I opted to have it transfer out to my Wells Fargo account and in two – three days it was in my checking account waiting for me to go get my stereo, which I did.

So, I use it now for all my short term savings goals. My emergency fund is in INGDirect still. In the examples above I pay my insurance annually to not have to think about it or pay any weird fees for splitting up the payments and I’m saving towards a nice birthday present for myself. So, I tell it when I need the money and how much and it figures out how much it will be to get to that goal. Then I forget it. I make sure to set the goal a week before I need the money to allow for bank transfer times and then I just forget about it. It’s similar to bank offered billpay except I’m making interest on the savings.

My other goal is for a Kindle2. I really want one. I’m hoping that between now and when this goal is reached there’s a service pack to allow the Kindle2 to read PDF’s. I don’t want the DX as it’s big and I want small. Big would undo the advantage of the small form factor I’m looking for in the Kindle2.

Oh, a note on public and private savings accounts. These two savings accounts I’m talking about here are two that I’ve made public for examples. You don’t have to make your savings goals public, obviously I don’t make all my banking public, but these two were good examples of uses for SmartyPig.